Although London are the host city, there are Olympic venues at a number of other places all over the country. For example, St James Park in Newcastle is one of the venues of the Olympic Football. The jewel in the crown of the 2012 venues will be the Olympic Park at Stratford in London. In addition to the main Olympic Stadium, the Olympic Park will also have the Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and 3 indoor arenas.

Obviously, venues like this aren’t cheap to build but while it may be hard for some to see, the benefits will ultimately outweigh the costs. Hosting a major event like the Olympics is a tremendous honour and Britain is more than capable of putting on a superb show. However, the Olympics isn’t just about the few weeks of competition, its also about the legacy it leaves behind.

Stratford is in the poorer East side of London so the regeneration of the area can only help the local people. The Olympic Park will eventually be the largest urban park created in Europe for around 150 years with parks and wetlands being created in the shadows of the venues. The sporting facilities will continue to be used and various football teams have shown interest in taking over the Olympic stadium. The Olympic village will be converted to residential apartments and a new university will also be founded specialising in sports science, green technology and digital media.

In addition, the transport infrastructure will also be improved to ferry visitors around and these facilities will remain in place for the benefit of the people who live in and visit London after 2012. With the 2015 Rugby World Cup already scheduled to be hosting in England with 3 London venues and a strong bid for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, many of the facilities and transport upgrades being made for the 2012 Olympics can also be used for these later events too.

The source of the spill is around 41 miles off the coast of Louisianna at a point where the sea bed is around 1,500m deep. The effect on the environment has been terrible and a huge number of peoples’ livelihoods have been badly affected. Not surprisingly, people are angry and want answers. President Obama has been very frank in his views blaming BP and calling them “British Petroleum”, a name which they have not used for many years. This is presumable to distance the US from any blame. He is a President under pressure.

With so many sub-contractors in place, I believe it is wrong to start to point the finger and allocate blame at this stage. An investigation needs to take place in order to establish what actually happened. Blaming people won’t solve anything, lessons need to be learned so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. Sadly, it isn’t the first corporate disaster and it won’t be the last. I can remember the early 1980s when a gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed nearly 4,000 people with other estimates putting the figure much higher.

While the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a terrible disaster, the bigger picture is that large companies and even governments will put profit ahead of everything else. Most of the world’s oil tankers fly under a flag of convenience. They are registered in places such as West Africa or Panama as they have lower standards for the vessel, equipment and crew. There are regular documentaries on TV investigating air and train crashes. Often, the cause is down to lack of maintenance driven by cost cutting.

The pursuit of BP to pay billions in compensation is very short sighted. For arguments sake, if BP were no longer around, does anyone really believe that another oil company wouldn’t step in to take over where they had been operating?  In addition, as a company, BP have always paid a good share dividend and this has been of benefit not only to the personal shareholders but also to the pension companies who will have invested both yours and my money in BP, know they will get a return on their money. Destroying BP as some people seem to want, could in turn mean lower pension pots of many people.

A proper investigation is needed and the right people need to be punished. Token fines will change nothing and certainly won’t help the people who are being affected right now.

The BBC put together these short clip with actor Brian Blessed (unofficially Britain’s loudest man). In the clip, Blessed recites part of Shakespeare’s HenryV with a slight amendment for the World Cup. Its well worth watching….

In the past, I’ve had to remove a virus on more than one occasion but this one was a real pain. After a lot of searching, I found the fix on Bleeping Computer’s website: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-av-security-suite

The AV Security Suite virus was quite hard to get rid of. It gives you a fake virus scan and tempts you to part with your credit card details for a fix. It also blocks some of your access to the internet making it quite tricky to remove it. I had to use a second ‘clean’ computer along the way to download some of the fixes and transfer them to an infected laptop with a memory stick.

Be careful as there are also a couple of sites offer solutions that were also scams. The solution I found on Bleeping Computer does seem to have done the trick but I only completed it a few hours ago. There is a wide range of antivirus online to choose from so it is worth spending some time researching the various choices available. Additionally it is worth researching the level of difficulty involved beforehand in removing antivirus programs.

The solution I used is detailed here:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-av-security-suite

Not only is the software itself superb, the support and tutorials offered by Market Samurai is a key feature of why I have found it so useful. Market Samurai allows you control a number of websites and helps you with keyword research. If you aren’t aware of it, keyword research is incredibly important when it comes to SEO. Its fairly easy to get to the top of Google, the trick is getting to the top of Google for the keywords that people are searching for.

When you have chosen your keywords, you can save them to Market Samurai’s Rank Tracker feature so you can see how your SEO efforts are improving. There is also a powerful feature that provides detailed information on your rivals websites.

Besides all that, Market Samurai also offers help with creating content for your website and you can publish straight to your blog from within Market Samurai.

Best of all, there are plenty of short, tutorial videos to help you every step of the way and I’ve found these as useful as the Market Samurai software. The videos explain various SEO strategies and Market Samurai is designed to help you implement these strategies quickly and easily. A lot of these things can be done without Market Samurai but it certainly makes it a lot easier and that is the value of this excellent piece of software.

Download your free trial copy of Market Samurai here>>

At home, wireless routers meant you could move around the house and keep your internet access without the need of wires. Its quite liberating for anyone who works at home to do so lying on the sofa in front of the TV.

However, outside the house and abroad has still been an issue. Wifi hotspots have been popping up all over the place but compared to home broadband costs, its not cheaper. I’ve paid as much for 24 hours access in a hotel as I pay for a month at home. In fact, the availability of free WiFi is becoming more of an issue when people chose their hotels. The Radisson chain are one of the few major chains that offer this service.

Over the weekend, I think I found a good alternative. 3G USB dongles have been around for a while and I finally got round to buying one at the weekend from T-Mobile. It cost £18.99 on a Pay As You Go plan and included £10 credit. The thing I liked with the tariff is that it is unlimited usage (subject to fair use) and is price at £2 a day, £7 a week or £15 a month. This is far better than having to pay an amount per Megabyte (which is usually 1,000Kb, not 1,024Kb).

The big advantage comes when travelling abroad. I’m going to South Africa during the World Cup so all I need to do is get the USB Dongle unlocked (costs around £10) so I can use any providers SIM card and then I’ll pop a South African SIM card in while I’m over there allowing me to us the internet at local rates. At present, roaming rates for data usage are outrageous and you have to be mad or a lottery winner to use data services when you are aboard. The 3G USB dongle is a great solution and I wish I’d bought one a long time ago.

Ever heard of a Lynx 480Z ?  No?  Thought not but that’s what I first used back at school. A quick search on Google tells me it boasted a CPU speed of 4Hz, 256Kb (not Mb) memory and graphics of 640×192…and don’t forget the 5.25 inch floppy drive.

By the time I got to college, word processors had come along. We used Wordstar but this was still pre-Windows and I often wonder how things would have developed before Microsoft came along and standardised everything for us. We have Microsoft to thank for common software in the majority of workplaces around the world. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and Visio are used extensively everywhere.

Of course, these software packages may not be the very best on offer but they have become an industry standard which means that it’s a lot easier for people to move from job to job without starting from scratch each time. Basic IT training will give most people key skills they need which are required by virtually all companies in some form or another and can also be useful for running the home too.

The US giant may be seem as an evil by many people but without Microsoft, I don’t believe software and computers would be as advanced as they are.

Personally, I was still sceptical. In my opinion, there is an almost unsolvable usability against handset (screen) size. Connection reliability was another issue. Who in their right mind would conduct financial transactions such as buying train tickets on your handset if the connection could drop at any time.

However, the Apple iPhone really seems to have cracked it. The screen size is very good without making the actual handset restively large. It utilises the 3G services by means of small bits of software or ‘apps’ to the extent that ‘app’ has practically become part of our language.

Psychic readings are getting more and more popular online (e.g. thecircle.com). If I want to have daily horoscope or psychic readings, all I have to do is download an app which are either free or at most a couple of pounds and my iPhone gives me the information via the app. The range of available apps is endless. If you can think of something, there will be an app for it.

In my opinion, despite its high price, the iPhone has done a huge amount of good in promoting 3G mobile services and its left for other companies to follow suit. I recently saw a documentary where Google have some great ideas for the smart phones but at present, there is only one outstanding option at present and that is the Apple iPhone.

Cue a month of bickering and generally pointless arguments for the next 4 weeks as the pathetic group of politicians desperately try to talk down the opposition rather than give reasons why you should vote for them.

I’m not going to start a discussion on who you should vote for, I’m going to discuss WHY you should vote.

Quite simply, we are fortunate enough to live in a democracy and when given the opportunity to cast our votes, we should not treat it with apathy. It is still within the living memory of many people who fought for the very existence of this nation and I can guarantee you all one thing – if our right to vote was taken away, we would most certainly miss it.

Its easy to fall into the trap that there are only two parties to vote for. In reality, under the present electoral system, there are only 2 parties who can realistically form a government but voter turnout rates are dropping all the time. Many people are understandably disillusioned with politicians and just refuse to vote. In my opinion, this will never change anything. Constituency boundaries need to be revised but sitting at home and not voting will not encourage change.

I’m 90% sure who I will vote for but I do know that I will vote. If it comes to 6th May and I haven’t decide, I will simply spoil my ballot paper. That way, it will be recorded in some small way. There should be a box for “None of the candidates” but there isn’t so spoiling a ballot paper is the way to do it.

Perhaps if enough people who have no intention for voting for one of the 3 main parties, decided to vote for a minority party, independent candidate or just spoil their ballot paper, the politicians may start to take note. Compared to what the people of some countries go through to cast a vote, we have it very easy. Its about as difficult as popping down to the local shop to buy a pint of milk.

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P.S.

Just so you know…

Jeff’s giving you the Traffic Launcher Formula Cheat Sheets, SEO Software and Training Tutorials for free but I am Jeff’ s affiliate so if you ever buy something from him  I may get paid an affiliate commission. And Jeff’s results are not typical plus there is no guarantee you’ll be able to achieve similar results, or any results at all,  just because he’s willing to give you his cheat sheets and training tutorials for free.

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